This Super Cool Watch Is Funkier Than It Seems at First

While seemingly anachronistic in a world where clocks are embedded into cell phones, a new watch brand from entrepreneur Jacob Juul called Bulbul promises a holistic approach to design and a sleek Scandinavian style. Photo: Bulbul

The designs are subtly modern, but use classic materials like steel and titanium for the cases, with Italian leather bands. Photo: Bulbul

The Pebble watch is just the first of a planned series of designs that will all be united under the Bulbul brand and its distinctive blue packaging. Photo: Bulbul

Juul is not a designer himself and hopes to act as a patron for fine Danish designers like KiBiSi, the popular collective he commissioned to design the Pebble. Photo: Bulbul

The blue hoop serves three purposes. First, it's an echo of the trademark color used on the packaging and sales materials. Second, it highlights the irreverent design approach that matches high- and low-value materials. Finally, the injection-molded silicone is less likely to break than the traditional leather alternative. Photo: Bulbul

Though the shape is just slightly irregular, the Pebble watch required custom tooling for almost every component. Photo: Bulbul

Bulbul is named after a songbird with a mohawk, and CEO Jacob Juul wanted his designs to reflect the balance of classical beauty and forward thinking style. Photo: Bulbul

Bulbuls are songbirds that can carry a tune as well as their cousins the nightingales, but have a more raucous nature and a dash of punk-rock style with distinct “mohawk” plumage on their heads. These art-house avians were the inspiration for Jacob Juul when he started his new watch company Bulbul and developed its flagship product, called the Pebble. The $440 leather and titanium timepiece resembles the smooth stones found in the tiny seaside village of Hjerting, Denmark where he was raised while also embodying his passion for iconic industrial design.

Juul started working on the Bulbul brand in 2011 after visiting BaselWorld, the world’s largest watch fair. True to cliche, the exhibition was filled with well-coiffed gents, suavely swirling their brandies and discussing paintings of horses. In many cases they represented brands that are hundreds of years old and sold watches that cost more than most people’s homes. Juul dug into his modest personal savings to create an alternative.

There could be confusion in the market between Bulbul’s Pebble and the Pebble Smart Watch that raised $10 million dollars on Kickstarter and has built awareness among tens of thousands of customers. Photo: Bulbul

Factories are set up to make circular, square, and oval watches.

Two years in the making, the Pebble is deceptively simple. On first inspection it looks like a traditional two-handed watch, perhaps slightly melted in a Dalí-esque fashion, but it required a surprisingly complex manufacturing process. Factories are set up to make circular, square, and oval watches, but the subtly asymmetrical shape of the Pebble required almost every part to be customized—from the sapphire crystal on the face to hidden rubber rings inside the watch that keep it waterproof. “We didn’t set out to create easily mass-produced watches, but watches that we ourselves would wear, and be proud of,” says Juul. “It’s an understated, delicate asymmetry that some don’t even notice at first glance, and that’s exactly what we wanted to achieve.”

“KiBiSi aren’t watch designers, but a multidisciplinary industrial design firm,” says Juul. “I knew that that was going to pose some challenges, but I also knew that once they got their heads around the production processes of watches, something truly unique would come out.”

Juul plans to release more watches and chronographs in the coming years in partnership with a hand-picked list of designers. “We have no grand plans of revolutionizing the whole watch industry, we do however want to create a range of great watches that carry a recognizable expression,” says Juul. “We hope to be on the forefront of a new generation of Scandinavian watches with classic Danish design with just the right amount of cool Copenhagen urban style.”

If sales of the Bulbul watch continue to tick upwards it might just be a matter of time until a trademark infringement case is brought against Bulbul by their high-tech counterpart the Pebble Smart Watch. Juul isn’t too worried about consumer confusion — he’s been using the name since 2011, is a fan of his more complex competitor, and thinks the two products are so different as to make the comparison laughable in the minds of prospective buyers.

“Our two-hand, analogue Pebble is probably as far away from a smart watch as you can possibly get,” he says. “In fact we deliberately tried to create a watch with no user manual or instructions needed—just pull out crown, set the time, press back in, and repeat once a year.”